- NAME
- DESCRIPTION
- EXAMPLES

- Example: show the latest RPMs in a single source directory
- Example: show the latest RPMs in a set of source directories
- Example: hardlink the latest RPMs to another directory
- Example: copy the latest RPMs to another directory
- Example: load RPMs from a repo metadata file

- AUTHOR
- WEBSITE
- LIMITATIONS
- SEE ALSO
- BUGS

# NAME

novi sample usage

# DESCRIPTION

Sample scenarios for using novi

# EXAMPLES

## Example: show the latest RPMs in a single source directory

You have a directory with the all of the RPMs for a given release. (That is, orignal RPMs plus the updates.) You want to see what's the latest version of each product therein.

       $ novi -a list /some/dir/RPMS

The output isn't much to look at. That will change in the future. The ``list'' option started off as a debugging tool.

Since ``list'' is the default action, you could shorten this commandline to:

       $ novi /some/dir/RPMS

The program already looks for files of the pattern ``*.rpm'' so you don't have to specify this on the commandline.

Note that the search for RPM files is NOT recursive; the files must exist just beneath the specified source directory.

## Example: show the latest RPMs in a set of source directories

Your RPMs are separated into different directories -- OS, updates, third-party, and so on. You want to see the latest version of each product.

       $ novi /dir1/RPMS /dir2/RPMS /dir3/RPMS [...] /dirN/RPMS

There's no hard limit on the number of RPMs novi can handle. The only limit should be your system's available memory for the objects, and any upper limits on your C++ implementation's STL containers.

## Example: hardlink the latest RPMs to another directory

You want to find the latest-version RPMs in a series of directories, and hard-link them to another location (e.g. the base of a new Kickstart tree).

       $ novi -a hardlink -t /target/dir /dir1/RPMS [...] /dirN/RPMS

As a reminder, the hard-link only works if all of these directories are on the same filesystem.

## Example: copy the latest RPMs to another directory

This feature isn't yet implemented. Expect it in an upcoming release, if enough people really ask for it.

Given the significant I/O activity, though, would you really want to copy the RPMs to the target directory? (A single Fedora release can have a couple of gigabytes in RPMs.) By comparison, a hard-link isn't quite so I/O-intensive: it just requires another file pointer in the inode table, which doesn't require reading/writing the file itself.

## Example: load RPMs from a repo metadata file

Some repos -- such as the base OS install media -- never change. You can run createrepo on those directories to generate repository metadata. In turn, novi can load RPM header info out of the repo metadata files instead of parsing each RPM individually. This results in significant performance gains because of the reduced I/O.

            $ novi -a list repo:/some/dir /some/other/dir

In the above example, novi will load RPM header info from the file

            /some/dir/repodata/primary.xml.gz

(It will also read RPMs from /some/other/dir. This demonstrates that you can mix and match directory and repo sources.)

# AUTHOR

Ethan McCallum

# WEBSITE

http://www.ExMachinaTech.net/

# LIMITATIONS

refer to the novi(1) manpage

# SEE ALSO

novi(1)

The Repository Metadata Project at http://linux.duke.edu/projects/metadata/ explains the repo metadata format.

# BUGS

refer to the novi(1) manpage, and/or the novi website at http://www.ExMachinaTech.net/